Centers of Excellence

Expert diagnosis & management of inflammatory neuropathies is critical to our patients. This is what our medical advisory board members had in mind when setting up the new Centers of Excellence program. We now have 12 healthcare facilities providing exactly that. More >>

Good question! I remember being so “foggy” that I would zone out driving down the block and decided that driving was not a good thing for me to be doing. I still have the fog and often forget things…which I did before GBS (my mind tends to think faster than I can keep up a lot of hte time) but not like this. Also, headaches. Dr’s say they are not associated with GBS but so many of us have them and have the bad ones. We may have had headaches before GBS but they seem to be more often now or at least worse.

I still get the foggy brain I have CIDP It is worse with stress and being Tired.
I overdo things Very often and try to keep up with the family especially when I feel good. I find that i also cannot find my words and have to take time to slow down and get my words in order before that I speak my family still make fun of me when I cannot get a word out correctly. ( they forget that i still stuggle with this). That only means that I am doing a good job of making them believe that life goes on and that this dissabilty is not me it is just a condition and we can overcome anything if we try. they have finally begun to talk to me like I am me NOT this disease.

I think that the foggy brain is caused by mostly the medications you are all on. The anti-convulsants are altering your brain. Once Frank started on Neurontin and Darvocet he couldn’t remember so many things.

I think ‘foggy brain’ goes with GBS. Though not necessarily directly caused by GBS.

You know how many people say that teething in babies can cause colds etc and medical opinion seems to be that teething doesn’t cause colds?

Well, teething may not cause a baby to get a cold – but teething occupies the body leaving other avenues less protected so that colds are picked up more easily. So in medical terms, teething doesn’t cause colds – but they tend to go together, as many mothers know.

Maybe it is the same with GBS. Perhaps medically speaking, GBS itself does not cause brain fog as it does not affect the brain but that doesn’t mean it is not because of GBS.

After all, apparently GBS does not cause depression, After all, GBS affects the peripheral nervous system. But the results of the GBS and the experience of it can cause depression. So, it can be argued that what causes the depression is not GBS but the isolation, fear, loss of movement, pain etc.

I don’t mind someone telling me that GBS is not the direct cause of my sometimes being so fatigued, freezing up in the middle of a conversation or constantly having cold feet – just as long as while they are telling me they are also putting a blanket over me when I lay down, telling me I don’t have t say a word, massaging my feet and doing the washing up – cos I’m too tired

Judi, you raise a good point which I think has been well answered by our friends. My point is that GBS is a demyelinating disorder of peripheral nerves and not a disorder of the ‘brain’. A number here have experienced the horrendous nigthmares and hallucinations associated with intensive care. This is not a feature of GBS but of any acute disorder that ends up in I.C.U. in my experience many severe acute disorders can cause ‘brain fog’. Also a number of family carers looking after the person disabled by GBS suffer brain fog for a year or more.
We all know the expression ‘I couldn’t think straight’ because of x,y,z. Well if you cannot think straight rerieval of memory is obscured as is muich of the input of memory. DocDavid